November 2008 Entries
Biodiversity conservation is often justified on the basis of its untapped value to people. Whether correctly assigned or wrongly assumed, the medicinal properties of wild species continues to remain high on the list of the reasons why we should conserve biodiversity. Why should it be different at the GEF?
The notion of South-South cooperation in capacity building, technology transfer and scientific research collaboration dates back to mid-1960s, when a “thirdworldism” movement started to take shape and penetrate international political circles. A late bloomer from the movement, the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) was established in 1983. For a while membership to the academy meant more stigma than prestige, the disdain, ironically enough, coming from the southern scientists themselves...
Jared Diamond belongs to a very small cadre of scientists who are able to produce long scientific treaties, containing deep original thinking, but whose work manage to end up in the best-sellers stand, alongside Danielle Steel and John Grisham - the only difference being is that you learn something. Diamond’s most recent feat, Collapse, scrutinizes tales of civilization decay triggered by environmental degradation, overpopulation, climate change and, often as well, by silly societal choices at c
Protected areas (PAs) are cornerstones of GEF's investments in biodiversity. But from time to time, PAs come under criticism for presumably imposing costs to marginalized rural communities...
Over the past decade, David Tilman, an ecologist from the University of Minnesota, built a solid reputation as the leading experimental scientist exploring the links between diversity and productivity in plant communities. In other words, do systems with more species convert more of the sun’s energy into biomass compared with less diverse ones?
You may have heard of the concept of “fishing down the food chain” when it comes to the oceans, and the knockoff effects that it has throughout the marine community. Ecologists have long proposed that the removal of predators from ecosystems can have cascading effects, usually resulting in less biodiverse systems.
Do GM crops represent a threat to the environment and to the genetic integrity of wild biodiversity? These and other biosafety-related questions continue as very lively topics of debate within the GEF partnership, with complex political, policy and market ramifications. But the hullabaloo is no less intense within the scientific community itself.
Gary Larson is arguably the best of modern cartoonists. Even if you wouldn’t agree with this statement, Larson can surely be considered unsurpassed in the art of representing human behavior through the allegories he transplants to the animal world. In the case of the legendary ‘suicidal lemmings’, his metaphor may now be assuming a more real connotation...
Since its inception, GEF has invested in approximately 1,600 protected areas, spanning 360 million hectares (890 million acres), equivalent to the territories of Mongolia and Greenland put together. But what, really, has GEF been getting out of this huge investment?
Like everybody else, grant-making foundations and the organizations that depend on their funding seem to be up for troubled times. Large foundations derive their grant-making power from endowment income. The meltdown of the financial market means that these endowments have nowhere to run for cover...
It is virtually certain that every major project on payments for ecosystem services (PES) in the developing world has had at least a cent or two of its funding coming from the GEF. A provocative article published in the November issue of Bioscience challenges the very notion of markets for ecosystem services becoming a foundation to promote ecosystem conservation objectives, under current regimes of property laws, inappropriate economic incentives and the lack of legal status granted to ecosyste